Page 75 of Vengeful Embers

“I can’t do that.” His voice lowers. “Not while you and the baby are in danger.”

The words suck all the air from the room. I stare at him.

“Of course you know about the baby,” I mutter. “That’s what this is about. Trying to take my baby.”

He hands me a file. I snatch it and flip it open. Medical records. Mine.

“You stole my records?”

“I had to know the truth.”

“And now you do,” I snap, shutting the file and shoving back at him. “You wanted to steal my records so I couldn’t go back to Doctor Pollock as he no longer had me on file.”

“At least I finally got the truth of what my sister might be up to,” he says. “Tara, Gavriil and Irina are using you to get back at me. You’re not pregnant. The egg was never implanted. They went to the clinic to start IVF.”

“Are you saying they set everything up?” I flip through the file. “But I had a sonogram in Moscow and it was there…”

“Did Gavriil organize it perhaps?” he asks me.

“Yes,” I nod, my brow knitting. “No, that’s not right. I peed on a stick. There were two lines.”

“The real blood tests are in there from the day the doctor phoned to give you your results,” Ruslan tells me, and I flip back to the blood tests. Negative.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest. My fingers shake as I flip through the file. Everything is there. Egg implantation. Follow-up notes. Irina’s additional IVF cycle. My stomach turns—None of it is mine, it’s all the procedures Irina’s had around the same time I was supposed to be having egg implantation.

“They were using me as a decoy to throw you off what they were really doing?” My eyes search his.

He nods.

The tears come fast, hot, uncontrollable. “I trusted them.”

Ruslan drops to his knees in front of me. His hands cradle mine.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “But now that I do... I’ll protect you. Always.”

My breath hitches.

“I… I don’t need protection if I’m not pregnant.” I sniff.

“Tara… you still do,” Ruslan says to me. “The RMSAD and the Black Widow are after you, regardless of whether you’re pregnant or not.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That is on me.”

“How could it possibly be on you?” My brow furrows. “I’m the one who went rushing off to Moscow and dug around. I’m the one who alerted you.”

He’s quiet, and his eyes search mine. “Whose idea was it to go to Moscow?” His voice is low.

My eyes widen. No, fuck. This is too much. “Irina’s.” My brow furrowed. “I can’t believe they would do this to me.”

His forehead presses to mine.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “This is all my fault. I pushed my sister to do this, and now you’re all tangled up in this.” He closes his eyes. “Fuck. When I saw you again, this is not how I expected it to go.”

“Did you expect a cup of tea hurled at you perhaps?” I laugh.

“Is that what happened to Konstantin’s shirt?” He laughs, and my heart lurches. Other parts of my body heat.

Our laughter sobers, and our eyes lock. I feel myself being pulled into the depths of his blue eyes.

His voice is a low growl, a promise that slithers down my spine like a serpent coiling around its prey. “Tara,” he whispers, and my name on his lips is a sin, a prayer, a curse all at once. His eyes—those fucking eyes—darken like a storm rolling in, and I can feel the heat of his gaze searing through me, branding me as his.

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